


When the Road Darkens

by hearts_blood



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Children, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Loyalty, Married Couple, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/hearts_blood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki orders his wife to leave him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Road Darkens

**Author's Note:**

> Written for not_rude_ginger for prompt "Unheeded warning."

_Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. – J.R.R. Tolkien_

Loki's green eyes smoldered as he finished his tale. "So that is the truth of it," he said softly. "All these centuries, you have been married to a shadow. A prince of Jotunheim."

"Of Jotunheim or Asgard," replied Sigyn, his wife of many centuries, "it matters not. You are still my husband. And now," she added, her hand on his cheek steadying his gaze when he would have looked away, "you are my king."

"And will you obey your king?"

"As best as I am able." Sigyn's voice was firm. "What does my king command?"

"I want you to leave me." Loki's gloved hands gripped her shoulders, digging through the fabric of her gown into her flesh. "I want you to take the boys and fly to some other realm, and forget me."

Sigyn frowned. "Husband, what new mischief is this?"

"No mischief, but dire earnest. I would have my sons brought up free of the taint of being a Frost Giant's get, and all the glares and whispers that would accompany that." 

"You think the Aesir would dare insult the king's sons?" But even as she spoke, Sigyn knew the truth of her husband's words, and Loki saw that she knew.

He let out a low, bitter laugh. "Don't be so naive. Think of the taunts and torments I endured, and those as a supposed son of Odin."

"Some of them honestly come by, my lord."

Loki growled under his breath. "That is of little matter now. Take Vali and Nari and go to Heimdall. He will see you off safely."

"To where?"

"To wherever he believes you will be well-hidden from Asgardian eyes. Even from mine." Loki brought his wife's fair hands to his lips and kissed them fervently. "Now go."

Sigyn straightened her back and met her king's eyes squarely. "No."

"...Pardon?"

"I said, no. I will not go into exile with our sons, and I will not leave you to face the trial of kingship alone." Sigyn shook her head. "If you do not wish to have me as your queen, then so be it, but until you no longer love me, I will not leave your side."

"It is _because_ I love you that I would spare you all of this." Loki and Sigyn blinked at one another in surprise. It was rare that the silver-tongued trickster could speak of love so effortlessly, and without the tone of glib dismissal he most often assumed. "I am your husband and I am your king. You will do as I say." 

Sigyn curled her fingers into the lapels of his coat, and kissed him hard. "In all other things, save this."

It was the last time she saw him. 

For many long, weary months, she mourned her husband's fall. Turning a brave face to her anguished sons and to the cheery indifference of the court, she wept silently in her bed at night, muffling her sorrow in Loki's pillow. Slowly, by painful inches, she tried to move on from his death. 

Until suddenly, he was no longer dead.

*** 

"Thor." The thunder-god looked up at the soft yet firm voice that reached his ears. Loyal Sigyn, Loki's steadfast wife, emerged from the shadows of the hall. "I would speak with you before you go."

"I must be brief," said Thor. "The Allfather is waiting."

"I know." The king's hall was warm, but Sigyn had drawn her green shawl about her shoulders as though she was chilled. "I heard. Loki lives. And he has gone mad."

"Not mad," Thor wanted to say, but he could not bring himself to lie to his brother's wife. He put his big hands on her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. "At least he lives."

"You are going to Midgard, to find him?"

"Yes. I will bring him back to you and your sons. To all of us."

"I believe you." Sigyn pulled back from his brotherly embrace, gathering and composing herself. "There is something I wish you to promise me."

"If I am able," Thor vowed, "you know I will."

"When you find Loki—I do not say 'if' because I know you will—you must swear to me that you will not mention me or my sons to him."

Thor was taken aback. "But...I do not understand. Surely the memory of his wife and children would help to bring him back to his senses, help him to realize the grave error of his ways--"

But Sigyn shook her head. "You know Loki as a brother. But I know him as a wife knows her husband. If Loki is to recover his own mind, he must do so without recourse to us."

"But why?"

Her smile was bittersweet. "Because he will accuse you of using his family against him, and as I and his sons are the only true family he feels he has left, he will never forgive you."

"And there is a great enough chance of that already." Thor nodded. He did not like it, but it was the unfortunate truth. "I have tarried too long. Father is waiting." He met her eyes, and was touched by the trouble he saw there. "I give you my word. And though I cannot promise he will be as he was when I bring him back, I _will_ bring him back."

***

When Loki was brought back to Asgard and safely imprisoned, and unbound and ungagged, he said very little. He greeted Frigga with polite, if distant courtesy, almost as though he did not recognize the woman who had suckled him as an infant and taught him his first simple spells. But otherwise he ignored Odin, he ignored Thor, he ignored the guards sent to watch over his cell day and night. He asked only for a cup of his wife's mead, to be delivered by her own hand.

"It seems a harmless request," said Frigga softly, still shaken by seeing the son she still thought of as her little boy altered nearly beyond recognition. "And Sigyn has never wavered in her support of him, even when we thought him dead."

"That is what worries me," was Odin's dour reply. "If they conspired before this..."

"They did not." The king and queen turned as one to look at their eldest son. "Sigyn wants no part of Loki's schemes. She would not even allow me to mention her name as an enticement to return. Jotun or Asgardian, king or disgrace, she wants no more than to have her husband back."

Odin's single eye pierced through Thor like a blade of ice. At last, he nodded. "Then go to Sigyn, and say that Loki requires her presence."

***

Sigyn was not a tremulous woman by nature, but the message that Thor brought set her stomach churning. But she mastered her fears as she always did, and prepared a tray with a pitcher and Loki's favorite cup of chased silver, to bring to her husband's prison. And if her hands trembled slightly as she did so , that could always be put down to the two small boys clinging to her skirts.

"May I come to see Father with you?" the younger of her sons begged. "Please please please?"

"No, Nari," said his mother in her firm, patient way. "Lord Odin has given permission only for me to attend on your father. Later, perhaps, if he behaves himself, you and your brother may be allowed to visit him."

Her elder son, Vali, clung to her golden girdle and said nothing, only watched her with wide, solemn green eyes. Both her sons had inherited their father's brilliant eyes and narrow features, but while Nari had Sigyn's fair, rosy coloring, Vali had been blessed (or cursed) with Loki's dark hair and intense expressions as well, so that the face that gazed up at her so earnestly was like her husband in miniature.

Vali was enough his brother's elder to understand many things which Nari was not yet able to, and one such thing was the fates which had befallen the rest of Loki's children. Cast out, cast down, imprisoned and enslaved, for no crime save that of being monstrous in the collective eyes of the Aesir.

What fearful punishment might Odin Allfather mete out to the sons of such a traitor—such a monster—as Loki had become? Sigyn knew, with the wisdom of a mother that goes deeper than mere magic, that this was her child's thought and fear, and a cold twist deep in her heart told her that she had no way to soothe him, for his fear was a true one.

Should Odin choose to punish Loki's sons for the crimes of their father, there was nothing Sigyn could do but share in that punishment. Silently she kissed her sons, and prayed instead for Loki's banishment. In that, at least, they might be able to follow him.

And if Odin should order Loki's execution... Well, at least this time his death would be certain. As certain as anyone could ever be of the trickster.

"I will tell your father that you missed him and want to see him," she promised. 

Nari was satisfied with that and allowed himself to be drawn off by his nurse, but Vali trailed after Sigyn and her tray. "Mother? Tell Father..." He hesitated. Sigyn did not turn to face him, but waited for him to find the words, her heart breaking. "Tell Father we missed him."

"I will tell him, my own."

She went swiftly away from her chambers and her sons, lest her facade of calm shatter and crumble.

*** 

He was pale behind the bars of his prison, paler even than she remembered, and seemed to her eyes to glow with an unhealthy light. His dark hair tumbled lankly down on either side of his face, very different from her dapper, immaculately-groomed husband who could be as vain as a woman about his appearance. There were hollows in his lean face that had not been there before; to Sigyn, he looked like a man being consumed from the inside out. 

Knowing Loki as she did, she was certain it was not by guilt.

The guard clearly did not wish to let her enter, but with Odin standing at his shoulder, there was nothing he could do save unlock the great door. For her part, Sigyn would have felt a great deal more at-ease without the Allfather's presence. She would have needed to be a fool to not know that this was as much test for her as it was a kindness to Loki.

Sigyn was many things, but she did not think she was that great of a fool.

She met the green eyes of the prisoner, eyes that she knew and did not know, could never hope to know as intimately as she wished, and crossed the threshold into the cell. "My lord."

He nodded once. "Lady."

Sigyn waited, but nothing was more was forthcoming. There was no table in the cell, no stool for her to set the tray down upon, only the bare bed on which Loki had sat—he had risen slowly on her arrival. Mindful of the eyes on her, both from within and without the cell, Sigyn moved past him to place the tray, with its heavy pitcher and cup, on the bed.

"You have been well?"

She carefully poured. "As well as can be expected, for one who thought herself a widow." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him open his mouth as though to speak, before recalling that they had witnesses. "Our sons are pleased to know that you still live, my lord." She offered him the silver cup, holding it between her two hands. "Vali asked me to tell you that he has missed you."

Loki reached out, but instead of taking the cup, he folded his hands around hers and held her fast. His long, elegant fingers were cool and strong, as they had always been, and with his back to their watchers, the ice in his eyes melted and she saw at last a glimpse of the man she had married.

Beyond the cell, Frigga turned abruptly away from the sight. Speaking a sharp word to the guard, she took her husband's and led him a little ways out of earshot. The Allfather made no protest, but Sigyn knew they would not have long. " _I_ missed you," she said softly.

With great care, Loki took the cup from his wife. Holding it in one hand, he cradled her face with the other. "I'm sorry I failed."

Sigyn shivered, and not from his touch. "Do not feel compelled to apologize to me for that."

"I tried to win Midgard for our sons. For you. You deserve to be a queen in your own realm."

In all of Loki's lies, there was a grain of truth. Sigyn knew that to be so, even if she refused to allow this one to move her. "My love... You did not do this thing for Vali and Nari, nor did you do it for me."

He did not protest, only looked down into the clear golden depths of the drink she had brewed with her own hands. "You mourned for me?"

"I did." _I am still in mourning for you,_ she added silently, willing him to understand. "We all did, your mother especially."

"I am... sorry for that," he said, in an awkward manner very unlike his first smooth apology, and Sigyn saw that he did not repudiate the woman who had raised him as he did the rest of his family. "I am sorry if I caused you pain, Sigyn, but then, I did warn you. I told you to leave me."

"You did. Do you remember how I answered?"

He smirked. "You said no." He gazed at her admiringly, until Sigyn's cheeks grew warm as a new bride's, and then finally tasted the drink in his cup, savoring the strong, fragrant liquid on his tongue as though it was something magical. "Exquisite. As always."

"Thank you, my lord." She searched for more to say, trivial inflammable things that said nothing of her torments and joys, but only prolonged their time together for as long as possible. "Nari was very disappointed that I would not bring him."

"I would have liked to see him one more time," said Loki, in a tone so wistful and resigned that Sigyn's throat closed up, and for a moment, she could not breathe. "Our sons... did you tell them... what I am? What they are?"

Slowly, Sigyn shook her head. "No, my lord. That is not my place."

Loki sighed. "Perhaps it is best that they never know that truth."

"My son." Both Loki and Sigyn turned, surprised to find themselves interrupted not by Odin or the guard, but by Frigga. "I must return your wife to her chambers."

Loki stared at the queen, the woman who had raised him, for a long moment, and Sigyn could not know what he was thinking. "Well, if you must," he said at last. He drained off his mead and pressed the cup onto Sigyn's hands. "For Nari, to remember me by." He took Sigyn by the shoulders and kissed her lips gently.

Even now, though he believed with all his heart that he would never see her again, he could not bring himself to do more in front on his mother.


End file.
